Istanbul Airport

✅ Trip Verified | I hate the fact that the airport has limit for free internet. Istanbul airport is a very big transit hub yet having this kind of set-up for internet isn’t good at all. Everything in the airport is over-priced. I’ll try to avoid this airport at all cost.

✅ Trip Verified | 18 hour transit on the way out and 6 hour transit coming back. Horrible experience on both legs. You get one measly hour of free WIFI subject to messing about scanning your passport and collecting print outs of passwords. There is nowhere really to sit as people tend to stretch across two or three seats. There is a 'sleep pod' area but it's €20 an hour! Basically for a seat with a 'roof' over it. The entire (gigantic!) airport is a shopping mall selling the sort of unnecessary overpriced rubbish that no one ever buys! The choice of food is dismal, just American junk options at restaurant prices. A burger and chips cost me a whopping €24. Staff are unfriendly and it's just a horrible atmosphere. The airport has a museum but unlike Schiphol's, Istanbul charges €13 admission!

✅ Trip Verified | While gleaming new, Istanbul Airport suffers from some of the ills of planning with no consideration of the real situations of travelers. Internet access is incredibly inconvenient, food options are dismal (for a country with excellent food like Turkey, this is very surprising), moving from one part to the other is slow and inconvenient. Airport staff is just ok. Depending on SMS messages for wifi connectivity is a very wrong idea. First, roaming is difficult between many countries. But mostly, even if it works, it adds incredible hassle for a situation where one needs fast, clear, and quick data to let someone home one made it safely, to warn somebody one has arrived, to check a last-minute hotel information. None of that should ever depend on SMS messages, registrations or having to look for a kiosk somewhere in an enormous airport. That's a serious issue Istanbul Airport needs to address.

Not Verified | First it is too big. Out of human proportions. For example if you are at the Gate F and going towards the Gate A you need at least 20 minutes of fast walking. Imagine having a 5-10 hand bag and imagine you are not in the best health condition. So looking for any service you need at least 5-10 min of walking. This airport exhaust you. It make even the most simplest trip a tiresome experience. Second the worst airport for connecting flights. You need to have at least 3 hours between two connecting flights, otherwise you'll loose the flight, as it happened to me several times only in January 2023. Simply skip this airport and its Turkish Airlines which dominates with majority of flights.

✅ Trip Verified | Why is accessing the WiFi such a pain in the neck in Turkish airports? Questions, name, ticket number, agree to an NDA in Skyteam lounge, then tells me my surname is incorrect. The main airport Wi-Fi is a mission requiring an SMS with a code to access an hour’s internet, and the Turkish lounge requires you to go to a kiosk (hidden) to get a voucher.

Not Verified | This is not an airport but a shopping centre with a few runways. Prepare to walk along miles and miles of tax free shops while trying to find your connection gate or the exit. Endless designer hand bag shops and food joints in immense halls without any automated walk ways in these central halls to speed up your walk from one gate to the next. Poor signage and no maps in sight. Its is ridiculous Turkish Airlines sells tickets with a connection time of 90 minutes as they are unable to facilitate the transfer process. After landing be prepared for a tour of the airport taxiing to the arrival gate. It took 20 minutes for my flight to reach the gate. Avoid.

✅ Trip Verified | The 5 hours I had to spend waiting in transit felt like no time at all. There are many nice stores and seating areas. I was able to find an area where I could do push-ups undisturbed. If you want to walk, this airport is huge, and you can walk from one end to the other and see plenty of interesting things in between. I did not feel threatened, since airports can have bad or unprofessionally executed security. Security was professional and not rude even though there were several security measures, and large amounts of people to be processed.

Not Verified | Upon arrival from London I looked for the gate for my connecting flight to Cairo. The connection was tight and there was no connecting gate listed. In the end I had to ask a random airport employee and she said that it was Gate D 8. This was incorrect. I had to flag down a first aid wheelchair lady who very kindly pushed me in the wheelchair a vast distance to the gate- she didn't have to do this but for her I would have missed my connection. Signage is appalling and distances are vast, not helped by no gate being on the boards. It would seem that my flight had been shoved into this remote gate and nobody had added it to the departures board. This is not a 5 star airport- any gate not close your arrival gate in a long way away if it is announced.

✅ Trip Verified | Been through the airport several times of late but the free Wifi from Turk Telekom never works. A SMS code is sent to your cell number but never arrives, so I looked up their customer service number (444 1 444) but that doesn’t exist. An international airport should do a lot better than this. Food prices are double what you pay outside the airport but this seems to be the case at a lot of international airports. Facilities are clean.

✅ Trip Verified | Transited through this gorgeous airport to and from TLV. What's not to like about this airport. Signage is excellent and the terminal is brightly lit clean and gleaming. Given the vastness of this terminal, walks to and from the gates to the central terminal can be long. I chose to walk from the Business Class lounge to the B gates. It took about 15 minutes at a leisurely pace. The one thing IST could improve on is having more English speakers to help those who needed wheelchairs and/or passenger carts. We had a long walk from our gate to the international transfer security check in. This is one of my favorite airports.